About investing, making money & financial freedom

Menu

Monthly Update November 2017 – The Portfolio & Big Life Changes

With the Christmas carols already jingling from the radio stations, and the cold freezing your fingers in the morning. You know the end of the year is very close.

With only one month to go, we will mark this year in many different ways. The biggest one – investment wise – has been our sell-off of the stock portfolio. We’ve changed our vision and strategy on investing completely, and therefore made some choices that will have a big impact on our lives moving forward. Instead of turning our savings towards dividend investing, we are now committed to real estate investing.

Our portfolio consisted of stocks from 18 different companies, having a total worth of 40.268 euro is no more. We’ve sold each and every one of it. We’re saying goodbye to Shell, Unilever, Mastercard, Amgen, Apple, Nike, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Johnson & Johnson, Muenchener Ruck, TKH Group, Walt Disney, Wells Fargo, LyondellBasell, IBM, Gilead, Bank of Nova Scotia and the last recruit, Allergan.

It feels a bit contradictory as we still believe in a prosperous future for every company we’ve held a position in. We will shy away from too detailed news updates (or company reports). I will keep following the market trends in general – as well as many of dividend investing blogs – from the sidelines. Just out of curiosity. Can’t help myself, really.

This month is the month of the big changes, apparently. Because not only did we switch investing focus. I also started my new job halfway through the month. Besides the unavoidable feeling of – oh f*ck, why on earth did I do this – everything plays out quite nicely. I’ve made a little business trip to Milan, get to enjoy really delicious lunches at the office canteen, and starting to get to know my new work focus and rhythm more and more.

Additionally, we have received two sets of keys this month. Both of our two rental properties have finally come into our possession. Which means a busy schedule and get it up and running as smooth as possible. One of them is already rented out. The other one needs some fixing up before we can attract any renters. Details of the second unit will be coming up shortly.

In the meantime we keep continue meeting people, seeing new properties to look for future deals and I’ve been catching up on the podcasts of BiggerPockets lately.

Last dividend update

Last month, there were some dividends trickling in and they will be for the coming few weeks as well. Nonetheless, this update will consist the last monthly dividend update from Divnomics.

For the month of November, we’ve received 39 euro and 52 cents, coming from Apple, Marathon, Mastercard, and Starbucks. A steady increase of 32.8% compared to last year. But does it matter anymore? Of course! I’m still feeling proud of all the dividend increases we’ve seen happening and just know how powerful the effects of compounding can be.

Starbucks wasn’t yet in our portfolio last year this time around. We had bought it right after they announced a sharp dividend growth of 25%. And this year again, they increased their dividends big time from 0.25 to 0.30 cents per stock.

The graph of our portfolio shows a beautiful line tumbling down all the way to zero. Every year we have had great progress and growth that underlines that dividend investing is a great tool to build up wealth and an additional income stream.

That journey will end for us here. We are collecting the last of our dividends in the coming weeks and start collecting rental incomes instead. I’m looking forward to reading the progress of all other dividend investing journeys and see what we’re missing out on.

On blogging

Our strategic change in our investment plan also has some effects on the blog. A few of the pages on here are clearly outdated and needs to be updated or removed. I’m not quite sure about the plans moving forward and will use some time to think and/or experiment a bit. In short, adjustments will be made. Anything is possible.

One thing will never change though, the blog will remain a reflection of our process and journey. The journey of building wealth, discovering a certain mindset, to learn from our mistakes and share our successes. As such the focus is simple and clear: growth.

Although this is the very last dividend and portfolio update, I’m curious to what you think. Should I continue to do a monthly update – but in a new form? Or not at all and instead, integrate our journey in other posts? As a reader, what do you think about it?

It’s a little bit sad to see that there won’t be any future dividend reports from you. But I think it’s a good decision and it really makes sense in your case.
With regards to monthly updates, it would be really interesting to see how your rental business goes, so maybe you could update us on monthly income from rental properties and expenses that are related to them?
Good luck!
-BI

Nice to see there are other FIRE candidates out there doing it with real estate 🙂
For us, everything is a bit complicated: We first started with one rental. Then, our side business took a good start and I managed it as a baby. After a few months, rental property 2 came along. Last year, we started a second side business and we bought rental property 3. After loads of struggles we sold property 2 this year and now we are updating property 3.
Turns out we became FI this year because of the two side businesses and rental income, how cool is that! I know its not REALLY FI but its as good as it gets for us! A few hours work every week gets all bills payed and more, and we get to be with our family 24/7 if we want. 🙂
When rental property 3 is ready to be rented out, we will look for another rental property to add to our portfolio. We are from Belgium, so its a bit like neighbours 🙂

Once again I wish all the bests for this move. When we had to sell some (not all) of our stocks in order to buy our rental, I was already a bit emotional about it 🙂 Even though it dropped back our dividend income, all together our passive income has increased with the rent, so I definitely didn’t regret.
Your real estate growth plan is very impressive and I’m really interested how it will develop. If you can arrange further financing with good condition, that would be awesome!